siderations of lucky and
unlucky than the maxims of wisdom. The name of the present Pope the
Romans hold to be decidedly of evil omen; so much so, that to affix it
anywhere is to make the person or thing a mark for calamity. And I was
told a curious list of instances corroborative of this opinion. The
first year of the reign of Pius was marked by an unprecedented and
disastrous flood. The Tiber rose so high in Rome, that it drowned the
stone lions in the Piazza del Popolo, flooded the city, and filled the
Corso to a depth that compelled the citizens to have recourse to boats.
The Government had a great cannon named after the Pope, which was used
in the war of independence sanctioned by Pius in 1848. The cannon Pio
was taken by the Austrians, although it was afterwards restored. There
was a famous steamer, the property of the Papal Government, named "Pia,"
which plied on the Adriatic. That steamer shared the fate of all that
bears the Pope's name. It was taken, too, by the Austrians, but not
returned; though, for a reason I shall afterwards state, better it had
been sent back. I was wandering one afternoon amid the desolate mounds
outside the walls on the east, when I saw a cloud of frightful blackness
gather over Rome, and several intensely vivid bolts shoot downward. When
I entered the city, I found that the "Porta Pia" had been laid in ruins,
and that the occurrence had revived all the former impressions of the
Romans regarding the evil significancy of the Pope's name. All who came
to his aid in his reforming times, they say, were smitten with disaster
or sudden death. He never raises his hands to bless but down there comes
a curse. I was not a little struck, in the winter following my return
from Rome, to read in the newspapers, that this same steamer Pia, of
which I had heard mention made in Rome as having about it a magnet of
evil in the Pope's name, had gone down in the Adriatic, with all on
board. It was one of the two vessels which carried the suite of the
Russian Grand Dukes when they visited Venice in the winter of 1852, and,
encountering a tempest on its return, perished, with some two hundred
persons, consisting of crew and soldiers.

As regards the affection which the Romans bear to Pope and Papacy, I
was assured by Mr Freeborn, our consul in Rome, that there is not a
priest in that city who had two hours to live when the last French
soldier shall have marched out at the gate. All who had resided for some
t